zeb, your words are truer than most people wanna realize.
rereading my post, and the others following, I forgot to rate the athletes. But then again I don’t think I could rate all of them in order since my approach is different and see all the athletes in their broad areas of discipline, with exception to the overall populations of bodybuilders and pilates peeps, as pretty darn “functional”. But if I stand my ground and say that gymnasts still is one sport/activity that produces more to excel into other sports. In other words, which I figured now to say- it’s a good base level to achieve before delving into other disciplines, or during learning other disciplines.
The name is at the tip of my tongue, but he was a gymnast most of his youth and with the help of his older brother, who was a wrestler and used to whoop up on him, got into wrestling and picked it faster than most of his peers and he credits his gymnastic to his strength and power in wrestling and his success. He later competed in NHB events (I think he did UFC, Abu Dhabi, and Superbrawl- I could be wrong). Oh his brother also was killed. I think his name was Monson.
I understand that “functional strength” is seen as detailed specific strength by most if not all people. Which is so funny since technique can overrule strength in many instances, especially for longer periods of time (endurance with a function?). But if I was to look at it from the POV of the marketing mogul before I try to sell the idea, which already happened of course, I present it as training to be able to handle anything. The approach without fancy words sounds like
“Being okay, or half-assed, with many things and not good at anything.”
Oh except for balancing on one leg, on a ball, with a piece up your bum and talking the phone witha grin on your face. Somebody doing the O’Reilly. Just dont’t believe everything you read or hear on the news.
I’d like to say gymnasts, wrestlers, and strongmen are pretty damn functional, but functional is sport related. An elite gymnast will be as functional to his sport as an elite wrestler, or golfer, or ping pong master. However, you guys overlooked decathletes. I’m on a D1 track team in college and the decathletes are some extremely freaky kids.
First off, you need some freaky genetics to excell in any elite level sport, but a sport where completely different energy systems and muscle fibers are taxed,and you’ve got a super athlete.
Think about it. The running events go from 100m dash to 1 mile run. You use completely different muscle fiber types and energy systems in these different races.
You’ve got to be able to high jump and long jump. For these events you need extreme explosive and speed strength.
Also, you must excell in the polevault. This is a highly gymnastic move.
After you’re finished with those events you have the throwing events. You need to be able to throw a shot, a javelin, and a discus.
Sure, most of these athletes are lucky to have freaky genetics and will therefore excell in their events, but a lot of the events are technique dominant. Learning to polevault, hurdle, and throw a discus is a highly frustrating and technical ordeal.
Decathlon encompasses training from all of the aforementioned sports pretty much.
If I had to pick an all-around “functional” athlete, I’d say decathlete.
-poper
[quote]rubberbubba wrote:
Day laborers. Not only is their physical conditioning more generic, they are more conditioned to working in adverse environments.
I just hired a couple of day laborers last weekend to help me move five yards of dirt out of a hole in my deck where a tree had died.
Those little guys worked their asses off. They flat outworked me hands down.
These guys did this on fast food burgers and coca-cola; no protein drinks, no supplements, no electrolyte replacement drinks, nothing.
Sort of makes you rethink your whole training regimen.
H[/quote]
I was going to mention the same thing about farmers. My father is 54 yrs old and is still stronger at performing his functional tasks on the farm than I am at performing many tasks. Functionally speaking, I sit at a keyboard all day. My fingers are HUGE (grin). Seriously though, I train in various ways throughout the year and I still can’t run with the ol’ man on the farm.
A few years ago I saw this Outdoor Extreme race challenge on TV. There were two teams. Each team had various outdoor experts and one ‘Strongman’. To start both teams were dropped off on top of a big mountain range. One of the strongmen was real cocky, it started to kind of snow and he was just loving it. By the end of the first day both Strongmen were done and this was walking DOWN hill. The cocky guy was crying like a girl as they hauled his worn out, worthless ass away in a helicopter. The other guy was a giant and he folded hard and fast. So, in this case, muscle was a huge liability. The rest of the teams were very lean people. For my money the best functional strength is a Navy Seal or an Army Ranger or someone like that.
Barry
Functional is too subjective. Depends on what the function is.
There are many different body types and physical characteristics for a reason.
[quote]kefu wrote:
The person with the most functional strength is the one who earns the most money from their strength.
A powerlifter who trains all week, earns no money and deadlifts 800lbs has no functional strength - he’s strong but to what end, because he can lift a bar and a lot of iron. Unless it transfers over into his real life - moving furniture, building a house, it has no function except to make him feel good about himself.
The NFL player on the other hand who deadlifts 500lbs has a good deal of functional strength - because his comparative strength, combined with his other talents, earns him several million dollars a year.
Functional strength is a misnomer - none of it really serves any function. Ultimately, all these things weightlifting, bodybuilding, gymnastics, football, whatever are just fantastically enjoyable hobbies that have replaced the functional activities:- hunting, gathering, building our own homes, farming our own land. IE:- the type of things that have been eradicated by life as we now know it.[/quote]
this is a really valid and novel POV, and absolutely in context.
My ranking:
Gymnast
Strongman
Farmer
Wrestler
Olympic Lifter
I think all of those methods of training are fantastic. And that’s sort of stunning seeing how different all of them are.
I’ll be funny here…
where’s that gr\oup of people that do ball and wobble board work all the damn time they’re in the gym? Don’t they count too?!
lol
Aight, funny is finished.
I guess all of this comes down to the fact that theres no such thing…all strength is specific to a greater extent. yes, there is a cross over, but it will not be that high.
Could it be termed specifc functional strength?
would this be beyond the point?
IMHO it shows how specialised we can be, whilst at the same time, being a jack of all trades (the cross over).
Does anyone actually have a definition of “Functional Strength” so that all you idiots can start arguing about the same thing?
Chubs - Are you talking about Jeff “The Snowman” Monson that fights for American Top Team?